My 5 Favorite Places for Art in Rome

New York Times

3 days ago

Compared to Europe's statelier cultural capitals, Rome retains its seamy side: 'a stupendous and miserable city,' as the film director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini had it, whose gods and temples arose from a swamp. My own Roman fixations are similarly high/low, tumbling from the refined geometry of 16th-century courtyards to the down-and-dirty streetscapes of postwar cinema. No point denying it, this place is crowded — especially this year, when the 2025 Jubilee has supersaturated the capital's museums, churches and Paul Mescal-approved amphitheaters — but it's so rich in art and architecture, so dense with public monuments and private gardens, that the savvy cultural visitor can always find something to see. Grand or gritty, Renaissance or Rationalist, these are the sites I think you shouldn't miss.
Find these five and discover more art on our Google map of Rome.
1. High Fascist camp on the playing field
With Jannik Sinner sitting at the top of the world rankings, Italian tennis is back in the spotlight — but there's a more sordid side to the country's sporting history. The Foro Italico, which hosts the Italian Open and other sports events north of the capital, is one of the most iconic sites of Italian Fascist architecture, and a reminder that not all reinterpretations of the classical tradition shared the Renaissance's humanist impulses.
The Foro Italico — originally named Foro Mussolini — brought together some of the most significant artists, architects and designers of interwar Italy to concoct a cult of Roman virility. The artist Gino Severini designed acres of black-and-white mosaics of wrestlers, horsemen and the neurotically repeated word DUCE. The indoor pool is festooned with propagandistic mosaics of swimming gods.
My favorite bit is the recently refurbished Stadio dei Marmi, a track that opened in 1932 and is ringed by five dozen huge statues of burly boxers, wrestlers, discus throwers and even tennis players in blazing white Carrara marble. (Up here you will also find the jagged Mussolini Obelisk, made of the same Carrara marble, the only remaining commemoration of the dictator in the capital.) There's a comic incongruity that undercuts the enduring creepiness of these statues; today Romans get in a workout beneath these Fascist muscle men, and anyone can visit for free.
Foro Italico, Viale del Foro Italico.
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